1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to systems for monitoring motor vehicle traffic conditions on highways and incidents affecting transit, and to an improved system for alerting drivers of traffic incidents and congestion pertaining to their usual or current route of travel, as well as users of transit of conditions affecting them.
2. Description of the Related Art
Traffic congestion on highways and other roadways has increasingly become a problem, particularly in most large metropolitan areas. For example, traffic congestion is not without an economic impact. For instance, a recent mobility study by the Texas Transportation Institute estimated that the cost of congestion for an average driver in the San Francisco Bay Area during 2002 was about $800 per driver per year, where drivers also wasted an average of 92 hours. This report also estimated that in general more than half of the travel delay is due to incidents such as accidents, obstructions, disabled vehicles, and related problems.
Further, it is largely acknowledged that travelers in the US and other countries are poorly informed of incidents and congestion impacting their route. According to Research Report PRR-2000-07 of University of California in Berkeley, which was commissioned to study an incident reporting system, radio reports are the primary source of Information for travelers. Radio reports are often delayed, as many radio stations report traffic every 10 to 20 minutes. As radio reports are limited to announcing a few incidents and are provided for a large area, their relevance to an individual traveler is generally limited.
For various stages of traffic reporting on the radio, human processing and interpretation of the data is required. As congestion and traffic density increase, and as an increasing number of traffic monitoring systems are being developed, traffic and transit data are becoming richer, and more complex. There is also an increased need for speedy dispatch of the data. As such, human processing of the data is becoming ineffective, and automated processing and understanding of traffic data desirable.
TrafficWarn™ dispatches traffic alerts to subscribers. Subscribers are required to choose routes for receiving alerts. Once a route is chosen, alerts are received for the entire length of the route, which can result in the receipt of unwanted and confusing information.
The Sigalert™ system dispatches traffic alerts to subscribers. Subscribers are permitted to select portions of highways.
Although the prior art methods are designed to provide notice to travelers of important information, they generally fail to provide a satisfactory solution to the problem of informing a large population of the travelers as soon as, and every time a problem is known.
Typically, prior art systems for publishing traveler information do not qualify data and therefore routinely publish outdated information. In addition, prior art systems typically publish the exact list of information from a data source without providing necessary additions or correcting omissions. For example, such systems do not predict or publish an expected end time if such data is not explicitly available. In addition, some prior art systems will continue to publish potentially outdated information, if for some reason the supply of fresh data is disrupted. Experience in the development of the invention disclosed herein has shown that disruptions in data can occur frequently. Thus, prior art systems are not enabled to determine whether the impact of an incident has expired.
Therefore, a need exists to provide an improved, more efficient and more automated system for management of incident and congestion data. Preferably, the system should be capable of matching to active or passive subscribers, and providing information through various mechanisms and on various devices including cell-phones and other similar devices which may be ported from one vehicle to another. The system should provide data that is reliable, complete, timely, and preferably concisely stated.
The foregoing and other problems are overcome by methods and apparatus in accordance with embodiments of this invention.